Valve officially launches Steam for Linux with massive sale

50+ Linux-compatible games available for up to 75 percent off.

Congratulations, Linux gamers. As of today, Valve has officially ushered you in to the wonderful, easy-to-purchase-and-update, controversially DRM-filled world of Steam gaming.

Ubuntu users can grab the official Steam client through the Ubuntu Software Center. A few dozen games are available for the platform at the moment, including first-party Valve support for games like Counter-Strike Source, the original Half-Life, and Team Fortress 2 (which comes with a free Tux the penguin in-game item for Linux users). High profile indie titles like Amnesia, Bastion, FTL, Serious Sam 3: BFE, and World of Goo are other highlights of the initial lineup.

"The introduction of Steam to Ubuntu demonstrates growing demand for open systems from gamers and game developers," said Ubuntu developer Canonical's director of consumer applications David Pitkin in a statement. "We expect a growing number of game developers to include Ubuntu among their target platforms. We're looking forward to seeing AAA games developed with Ubuntu in mind as part of a multi-platform day and date release on Steam."

Does this mean they've fixed the issue where games show as having Linux versions available in the client when they actually don't?

Edit: Since people are downvoting me, I should clarify that I'm not trying to be snarky here. When I set my library view in the Linux beta client to "Linux games", it showed a bunch of games in my library that don't actually have Linux versions (e.g. Cave Story+). In order to find out which games actually had Linux versions, I had to consult a list on a web page.

I presume this is mainly a test to determine what kind of numbers they have on a Steam userbase. Right now the steam box going linux is a big chicken and egg problem, nobody will buy it unless there's good games for it, but devs won't make good games unless there's a big enough market to sell them. This is step 1 in determining market size, and determining how much hardware they'd need to sell for the platform to become enticing for devs. At least that's what I'd guess.

Does this mean they've fixed the issue where games show as having Linux versions available in the client when they actually don't?

I've never actually come across that issue... and in fact, I didn't even hear about it. So, I would say that's probably a yes.

I believe it was still in the beta a week or two ago when I tried it on my XBMCbuntu HTPC. When I set the library filter to "Linux games" it showed things like Cave Story+ as games from my library that could be installed on Linux.

I presume this is mainly a test to determine what kind of numbers they have on a Steam userbase. Right now the steam box going linux is a big chicken and egg problem, nobody will buy it unless there's good games for it, but devs won't make good games unless there's a big enough market to sell them. This is step 1 in determining market size, and determining how much hardware they'd need to sell for the platform to become enticing for devs. At least that's what I'd guess.

Looking at some of those games that are available on Linux right now, some of them are really really good (Bastion, FTL, Killing Floor, Trine 2, SPAZ, all great games). No, CODBLOPS isn't there, but that isn't the audience base they're trying to attract right now.

Ubuntu users can grab the official Steam client through the Ubuntu Software Center. A few dozen games are available for the platform at the moment, including first-party Valve support for games like Counter-Strike Source, the original Half-Life, and Team Fortress 2 (which comes with a free Tux the penguin in-game item for Linux users).

Hopefully this works out. I think computers have reached the point where paying for an OS seems a bit bizarre. As shuttleworth kept saying, give folks the OS for free, and then monetize the markets it creates. Free OS ... buy games for it, buy software for it, buy music for it, etc, etc. I think that's the right business model.

Sounds weird, but we've seen free-to-play games take off like wild fire. Couldn't we assume that "free-to-use" OS could possibly follow the same business model? Give them the OS for free, let them have basic apps on it for free ... give them a market place to buy more robust stuff if they want.

It's worked for Android, Apple phones, ... I'm still surprised we have to pay to get Windows and OS X on our computers.

Does this work on anything other than Ubuntu? The title should be clarified if that is not the case.

I think the beta worked on anything Debian based, as they provided a .deb package. They're promoting Ubuntu as the official platform, as the Linux Steam client is officially available in Canonical's curated Ubuntu Software Center.

Is it only the linux versions that are on sale or can I take advantage of this for my windows box? (I'm running ubuntu on a netbook that struggles to run solitaire)

Steam doesn't sell platform-specific game versions from what I've seen. When you buy a game, you can usually play it on all platforms that the game supports.

Yeah, and that's arguably been one of the major weaknesses of Steam's cross platform push. It matters less for new games, but particularly for old ones good ports cost real money. Steam doesn't offer any strong mechanism to encourage that, or account for different companies being involved with ports vs the original developer, and that seems to have kept the selection lower then is ideal. I'd have preferred if developers had the choice to either have a direct, free "SteamPlay" happen (like right now) or alternately to have "Upgrade to SteamPlay" be a for-pay option. Oh well.

Tundro Walker wrote:

Hopefully this works out. I think computers have reached the point where paying for an OS seems a bit bizarre. As shuttleworth kept saying, give folks the OS for free, and then monetize the markets it creates.

I strongly disagree with you, and most emphatically do not want my OS providers to feel like they most "monetize" the OS experience. I hate F2P online games and the like for same reason: it creates perverse incentives and disassociates costs from benefits. I'm a happy user of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but I much prefer donating once per year or buying a physical item rather then have some pressure to stick in ads or force use of an app store. Same with Windows and OS X, they're worth money and I don't mind paying for it at all. In fact I want it paid for upfront, and thus be the customer, rather then the product.

No, CODBLOPS isn't there, but that isn't the audience base they're trying to attract right now.

Yeah, who would want to attract people with the most popular gaming franchise that exists right now. That would just be silly.

You got the quote thing wrong. I didn't say that. And i suspect they want as much audience as possible, regardless of platform. They've got some great indie type games up there, and im sure would have aaa if there were linux ones available. They arent holding back yo target a market segment, at least I can't imagine what it would gain them to do so.

Many thanks to Gabe and Valve. I've gotten to the point over the years where I simply prefer to spend my time in Linux. As a result I'd be in the mood to play an old favorite Steam game but it just wasn't worth the hassle of booting into Windows or tinkering with Wine. Now that I've been running it on Gentoo since the beta I'm loving being able to just jump in and play some old favorites or browse around for something new.

I presume this is mainly a test to determine what kind of numbers they have on a Steam userbase.

That's what the Steam hardware survey is for...

no, you don't have to run the hw survey to let them know you're running linux. simply logging in w/ a linux client does that already. i'm sure the client sends in something similar to a browser agent, to let them know who's coming from where, and whether or not your client is out of date and needs upgrade...

i'd like to be excited about this, but if all they're porting over is really old stuff, it won't go well.

Does anyone know how performance compares with the Windows versions? Last I heard, OpenGL was still not even in the same ballpark as Direct3D.

Where did you hear that? OGL is pretty much at performance and feature parity with Direct3D. In fact, when Valve was porting L4D2 the OGL Windows version ran faster than the D3D Windows version.The biggest source of difference is likely to be the state of drivers between Linux and Windows. Nvidia and AMD tend to reuse as much code as possible between the two in their proprietary drivers.

Does anyone know how performance compares with the Windows versions? Last I heard, OpenGL was still not even in the same ballpark as Direct3D.

I've got into the beta back in November, and one of the things I've been most impressed by is the work that Valve is doing to bring 3D performance for Intel graphics (my notebook has an Intel HD 3000) to a usable state. There have been major updates to the graphics drivers nearly every week, and performance (in terms of actual frame rate) has just about doubled to where games like TF2 are now playable. Valve seems to be very serious about making Linux a viable platform for Steam.

Can't speak for ATi and Nvidia cards, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting the same push.

Does anyone know how performance compares with the Windows versions? Last I heard, OpenGL was still not even in the same ballpark as Direct3D.

Where did you hear that? OGL is pretty much at performance and feature parity with Direct3D. In fact, when Valve was porting L4D2 the OGL Windows version ran faster than the D3D Windows version.The biggest source of difference is likely to be the state of drivers between Linux and Windows. Nvidia and AMD tend to reuse as much code as possible between the two in their proprietary drivers.

I read an article on it a few years ago. Evidently, things have changed. Thanks for the info

Does anyone know how performance compares with the Windows versions? Last I heard, OpenGL was still not even in the same ballpark as Direct3D.

I've got into the beta back in November, and one of the things I've been most impressed by is the work that Valve is doing to bring 3D performance for Intel graphics (my notebook has an Intel HD 3000) to a usable state. There have been major updates to the graphics drivers nearly every week, and performance (in terms of actual frame rate) has just about doubled to where games like TF2 are now playable. Valve seems to be very serious about making Linux a viable platform for Steam.

Can't speak for ATi and Nvidia cards, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting the same push.

I can speak for ATI cards, I've been using a Radeon HD 6950 card with steam for linux and its been amazing. Any game I try out for it can be done on max settings with little problem. Amnesia: Dark Descent actually performs better for me in Linux than Windows 7

Hopefully this works out. I think computers have reached the point where paying for an OS seems a bit bizarre. As shuttleworth kept saying, give folks the OS for free, and then monetize the markets it creates. Free OS ... buy games for it, buy software for it, buy music for it, etc, etc. I think that's the right business model.

Dare I suggest that Valve's TOS denial of class action lawsuits is far more controversial than any DRM scheme? I have a handful of Steam games I can no longer play because I refused to agree to it, nor will Valve refund any amount because of the denial of service. Apparently everyone else is just fine with this and apathetically agreed to it because "lawyers are evil". Evil lawyers notwithstanding, it should be the providence of an impartial court to decide the merits of lawsuits, not a corporation with a vested interest in avoiding being a defendant in any, yet it's not even news now. I find that shocking.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.